Status holders are increasingly and increasingly likely to find paid work, they mainly work as temporary workers and in the catering industry

Over the past ten years, status holders have been finding paid work more and more quickly. That leaves new ones figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

More and more status holders are already working a few months after obtaining a residence permit. Of the group between 18 and 65 years old who received a permit in 2024, 13 percent had found work within three months. Ten years earlier this was only 1 percent.

Of the group that received the status in 2014, approximately one in five had a paid job after three years. Of the 2021 group, this was already one in three after three years.

After asylum seekers have received a residence permit and are therefore ‘status holders’, they are allowed to work without restrictions. There are rules for asylum seekers: they are only allowed to work six months after their asylum application has been processed and the employer must apply for a work permit for them.

Temporary employment and catering industry

At the start of their career, status holders are often part of the ‘flexible layer’. About half of the working status holders from 2024 started as on-call workers. Ten years ago that was about one in three.

The longer status holders stay in the Netherlands, the more often they work as employees. Of the permit holders from 2014, the share of on-call workers has halved in the past ten years from 34 to 17 percent. After ten years, most are employees, namely 69 percent.

Of the 2024 group, more than a quarter worked in the temporary employment sector and another quarter in the catering industry. About 10 percent worked in retail.

Statistics Netherlands does not provide an explanation for the increasing share of working status holders. In recent years, a policy has been introduced in The Hague to help refugee people find a job. This has been the case since 2024 subsidy available for employers to employ status holders on a sustainable basis. The rules for asylum seekers will also soon be relaxed, meaning that the group with a successful application can start work after three months.

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